The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (artist's impression) is under construction in a remote part of Western Australia.

A NEW WEB FEATURE makes it possible to take a ‘bird’s eye view’ over the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) and see the construction progress of CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope.

ASKAP Live is an interactive map of the 36 antennae that will make up the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). In addition to showing the location of each antenna, ASKAP Live gives pictures and status reports on the construction of each antenna.

Colour coding provides, at a glance, the construction status of each antenna: antennae indicated by green icons have already been completed, those currently being constructed are in blue, and the six antennae that will make up the Boolardy Engineering Test Array, or BETA, are marked with yellow or purple icons.

A screenshot from the ASKAP Live web site.

All 36 ASKAP antennae are being constructed at the MRO by their manufacturer, the 54th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (known as CETC54), with the assistance of CSIRO’s ASKAP team and local contractors.

The antennae are first built and tested in China by CETC54, with the antenna sections then disassembled and shipped to Australia. The antennae are then reassembled on site at the MRO, approximately 315 kilometres north east of Geraldton in the Mid West region of Western Australia.

Once built, ASKAP will operate as part of CSIRO’s radio astronomy facility for use by Australian and international scientists.

As well as being a world-leading telescope in its own right, ASKAP will be an important test-bed for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a future international radio telescope that will be the world’s largest and most sensitive.

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